A Morning of Mourning

It’s a lovely damp cool morning, a mix of sun and cloud and the promise of yet more rain to revive our parched land and wilted trees. It is high summer, a nest of red breasted grosbeaks has hatched and is decorating our feeders, the ED and family are off on an adventure vacation and all should be well.

Only it isn’t. I keep seeing in my mind the solemn, lovely face of little Taliyah Marsman and remembering that they have found her body and wondering how much horror and terror attended her pitiful death. Yes, there are piles of dead and suffering, wounded children in Nice today and what happened to them is terrible. But their deaths and those of their parents and relatives are less real to me than what I am quite sure happened to poor little Taliyah before she died. Any of us can imagine why she was taken to a deserted field, alone and at the mercy of a human animal.

I am glad my granddaughter is old enough and strong enough and smart enough to be able to defend herself. Although girls and women are often, however clever and strong they are, victims anyway. They are vulnerable to the twisted and sickening desires of the madmen and equally vulnerable to the attitudes of society toward them. As are black males in our society vulnerable to the kind of attitude that makes nervous and badly chosen or trained policemen shoot them for little or no reason. As are ordinary people going about their innocent lives, perhaps watching fireworks, perhaps dancing in a night club with their friends, vulnerable to the mass killers created by outmoded ideas.

It is a horrible world out there. Innocent men shot because of the terror and rage of the police.  Police shot because of the terror and rage of the persecuted. Holiday makers crushed in the midst of their peaceful enjoyment. The madness of indiscriminate political murder weighs on us all. And I do mean political, even if it is disguised as religious fervor. We are all, in some way, at the mercy of the fanatic and deranged, even if we are personally safe for the moment, because of how the horrors they enact affect how we feel and act toward others.

It is peaceful here. My most pressing irritations are deer flies. And I suppose that Taliyah’s poor little face will fade from the forefront of my mind in time, stored away with other horrible facts we have all had to assimilate and live with. Only children cry out ‘It’s not fair’. Those of us who are supposed to be adult know that fairness is nowhere in this mess of hatred festering in our world. What is so horrible is that it goes on and on and all the good intentions in the world will not solve it. Nor all our tears wash out a word of it.